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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 1(791), p. L5, 2014

DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/791/1/l5

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Identification of the Optical Counterpart of Fermi Black Widow Millisecond Pulsar PSR J1544+4937

Journal article published in 2014 by S. {Tang}, D. L. {Kaplan}, E. S. {Phinney}, T. A. {Prince}, R. P. {Breton}, E. {Bellm}, L. {Bildsten}, Y. {Cao}, A. K. H. {Kong}, D. A. {Perley}, B. {Sesar}, W. M. {Wolf}, T.-C. {Yen}, Sumin Tang ORCID, David L. Kaplan and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We report the optical identification of the companion to the {\it Fermi} black widow millisecond pulsar PSR J1544+4937. We find a highly variable source on Keck LRIS images at the nominal pulsar position, with 2 magnitude variations over orbital period in the B, g, R, and I bands. The nearly achromatic light curves are difficult to explain with a simply irradiated hemisphere model, and suggest that the optical emission is dominated by a nearly isothermal hot patch on the surface of the companion facing the pulsar. We roughly constrain the distance to PSR J1544+4937 to be between 2 and 5 kpc. A more reliable distance measurement is needed in order to constrain the composition of the companion. ; Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters